Why do they hate democracy?

The New York Times reports from Beaumont, Texas, where they're waiting anxiously for the Supreme Court's decision on the Voting Rights Act:

Tempers have flared at school board meetings and lawsuits have been filed, as a mostly white group of critics have charged the black-majority school board with enabling corruption, wasteful spending and academic cheating. The school board’s majority denies the charges and says the whites simply cannot tolerate black control.

Determined to change the board but aware that the incumbents could not be beaten in the current districts, the critics pursued alternatives. Last December, they pushed for a new election method that was approved, along narrow racial lines, in a citywide referendum. The Justice Department, citing Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, objected to the new method and it was dropped. 

Then, in April, the critics took advantage of a little-noticed state statute that rendered three of the board’s black incumbents unexpectedly disqualified from the next election, a procedural maneuver affirmed by a Texas appeals court. This, too, was blocked by the Justice Department.

I don't know how they could make it any clearer, without wearing robes and pointy hoods to the press conference, or maybe white turbans. The "mostly white critics" (some of them have strawberry birthmarks?) are demanding the right to determine the results of an election beforehand, on account of the racial propensity of the majority to vote for the wrong people.

If the Supreme Court is OK with this, then the theory behind it is going to make pretty interesting reading.

Disqualification as a campaign technique. Guardians Council of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Via Robert Cargill.